I have woken today with a hangover of blerghs. Yesterday was the kind of day on which nothing specifically big or bad happened, but many of the little things that happened were symbols and symptoms of other, bigger things. Each of them, on their own, was a simple blip in an otherwise unremarkable day, but they seem to have spent the night worming their way through my veins so that this morning I have woken on the edge of a mood I have so far refused to embrace.
Not helped by that Big Red Cat that sits at my door mewing. I love cats, but I find strays shiver-inducing. Also, the toaster is busted. No one knows how.
Most of the things that happened yesterday are things better left untold to the internet, but there’s a small mother-wife thing I want to talk about.
If I could quantify it, I would say that ninety eight percent of the time, I’m okay with the role I have to play while we live here. For better or worse, to a great extent or a little, our lives are shaped by the mister’s work. I have to assume that when the lads aren’t at school, they’re my responsibility. It means I don’t get out of an evening much.
The mister is away a lot and when he’s in Abu Dhabi he has the normal commitments that jobs like his do have. I can do things, I can get out, but I always need to have childcare Plan B in place. Just in case. There’s no simple child care solution in Abu Dhabi. ‘Casual’ employment as we would know it in Australia is illegal and, for my situation, employing a full-time, live-in maid to effectively act as an on-call babysitter is like hitting a pintack with a sledgehammer. There are casual solutions of course, and the chances of anything going wrong are no greater than they would be in Australia, but it’s the consequences of things. That’s where the difference lies.
This is not to say the mister doesn’t play his part, and I’m always reluctant to write about these things, because I would hate anyone to think that I am criticising his availability. When he is here, he does everything he can to give me time and space to work. He’s a hands-on Dad who has taught the lads to scrub the toilets and hang the washing out. Emotionally, he has never not been there for me. And I’m not going to detail the twenty year history of our relationship to demonstrate why it’s okay that every now and then such imbalances can be justified. Suffice to say, I think they can. They have to be.
Besides, it’s not like I don’t get any benefit from the life we lead. You will have noticed, for example, that I’ve been able to do a lot of travelling and I’ve been able to take my boys to some pretty special places. Most of the time, when I feel frustrated or lonely or bored, I’m able to think of the travelling that I’ve done, of the time that me and the lads have spent together, and it is excellent compensation.
But you can’t run a balance sheet of things. Brains – well, mine at least – can’t always rationalise. You can’t draw two columns, put London under ‘Wins’ and then balance it with losses. Sometimes emotions get in the way.
And so, we get to this week and the tickets I have booked myself for the Abu Dhabi film festival and the inevitability that one of them will clash with something the mister needs to do.
‘Really?’ I said as he told me about it last night. ‘Do you really have to go?’
I just want to go to a film. I just want to lose myself in someone else’s life and someone else’s thoughts and someone else’s dreams. And I just want to do it without having to think my way there. Where will I drop the children, when will I pick them up, what will I feed them, when will they finish their homework, who will I owe by the time the night is done.
I left for last night’s film and by the time I was sitting in my seat felt bad for making him feel bad, because he already knew that I was going to feel bad. ‘If you need to go tomorrow,’ I texted him,’ ‘I’ll stay home.’ I added, so that he understood that the offer is genuine. ‘Not happily, but I will.’
I don’t say this to be a martyr or to the play the role of long-suffering corporate wife or to guilt him into saying, ‘No, no, you go’ (which, of course, he does say). I say it, because I can sit through a film with my brain a constant tickertape of ‘you shouldn’t be doing this, you shouldn’t be doing this’ or he can go out with clients knowing that one film is not too much to ask.
Look, I know that in the course of a lifetime together this is a small, a miniscule kind of thing. I know that in the balance sheet of life one missed movie or one missed client dinner will barely register. I know that this over-intense amount of time I have to spend with the lads is fair trade for the wonderful few months time I just spent with them in Adelaide.
And anyway, three of the things that happened yesterday – not to me, but around me – were enough to remind me that a person who has the time to fuss around with nuances like these is a fortunate person indeed.
So, you know, by lunchtime I will have pulled myself out of this funk, I will have sucked it up and hardened up and I really will have moved on.
I’m going to start by throwing a glass of water in the direction of that mewing, worm-ridden cat. (Sorry Cat People).
Well, if I was one of those warm, fluffy people, I would probably say *hugs* or something. every one needs (for want of a better word) to lose themselves in a film some time (have you seen Dowton Abbey–miniseries, not film?)
You never fail to make me laugh (in a good way I mean). Is there a new series of Downton Abbey yet?
Acc to IMDB, season 2 is screening in britain at teh moment, ending with a Xmas special, so I’m guessing it won’t be available elsewhere until the new year.
I thought it was the closest the Poms could get to 6FU, tho of course in a period setting (the makers *never* mention Upstairs, Downstairs, mind you, in their ‘The Making of…’ features).
Tracy, I found myself nodding throughout this post. LC is in a pretty similar role here in the land of cows and fondue and, at this very moment, we have a school friend of Sapphire’s here, staying whilst her mother recovers from a cerebral haemorrhage in hospital. N’s father died of cancer six year ago, and her mother’s relatives are all in Lebanon and trying to arrange visas to come over.
And yet, I’m honoured to be able to do all this and realise that my role is, for now, mostly ‘home based’ with the freedom, like your good self, to overthink things.
Oh and Downton Abbey – series two has started on ITV. Sapphire and I are addicted. Poor poor Matthew…..
Sometimes I find myself thinking that intelligence is overrated. I wonder what it would be like to just react to things, and live in the here and now instead of analysing and re-analysing everything. On those bad days it does seem a more comfortable way to live.
But you might end up as that awful cat that still seems to think I should be opening my front door to it.
I found myself nodding too. But for different reasons.
I wonder, because you never say, because it’s a blog about you, but what with all the work and the being away from the family, what does the mister do for escaping?
I don’t even know what I do because I’m always doing my relaxing in the same way that my two-year-old deals with being up at 9pm: “I’m NOT TIRED! I’m UP. Having FUN. I WILL NOT SLEEP AWAY THE ONLY TIME I HAVE WHERE I’M NOT WORKING OR SLEEPING.”
Like that.
I just wonder.
Fair wonder. Honestly, when you’ve got young children, if you want the kind of career he wants and you want to be the kind of dad he wants to be, the kind of partner he wants to be, you don’t get to escape. Same dilemma, different details.
Our children are old enough that all of that is changing now…physically, we don’t have to be around quite as much. I suspect that’s part of the problem. Everything has to be renegotiated again. And this isn’t a good environment for a woman whose been brought up the way that I’ve been brought up in which to be renegotiating.
You’re allowed to say it because you being assumed, by the entire world at large, to be the one to give up your work and look after the kids, is structural. Not just personal.
The bit about assumptions about who is free to work late / go to meetings / go away for a few days and who has to organise childcare if she wants to go to a movie are so very familiar. Only in my case it’s going to my regular Tuesday night choir practice. Or a cooking school class, organised months in advance and put in his diary, only to have him getting back a day later from a trip to China. He couldn’t have gone on the trip any earlier because then he would have missed the final of the Rugby World Cup.
I know… first world problems. But as you do so often, Tracy, in writing about your life you have made me organise thoughts about my own.
Thank you, Deborah.
We had this set-up, too. I worked part-time, but that was ancillary: my *real* job was to be the caretaker. But thanks a crashed economy, I’m now working full-time and my husband is the caretaker. It’s been a reveal, you know?
I have to say, I’d rather be a full-time caretaker and part-time employee than the reverse.
I worked full time last year, and I quite enjoyed it for a while. Novelty factor I think, but the logistics of working full time here are muddled by all sorts of things, especially the long summer break.
I do think I’ve got a good life, and in general terms it’s the life I’ve chosen over other things. It’s just every now and then…
You know, I think I really have not absorbed how things are in the US at the moment.
I hear you sister. Currently our afterschool care consists of C catching a bus to my workplace and playing on the internet in a spare office until I’m ready to go home. This only works while my other colleague is on maternity leave, I’m going to be in the office [of course now is the busiest time and I have to time field visits so that I'm back in time and/or hope that my work mate is at hand to let him in] and C’s sister is still at daycare. Next year who knows what we will be doing. MyNigel can come home early on Fridays because of study leave but no other days because his work would fall about without him yadda yadda.
My workmate asked me the other day if I ever feel more intelligent than my hubby. I told her that I do sometimes, but no one will ever know because he has the high flyer job and I do all the other bits that allow him to keep that job. That said he is keeping us in a style to which we have become accustomed and if our retirement is half as good as I hope it will be, we are going to be very nicely set up indeed. So, yeah first world problems that will be gone in a few years and I’ll be wondering when the kids grew up so fast.
Shorter me: yes it is frustrating, but as Helen says it’s the world not just them. The RWC thing would be pretty damn annoying though.
“…he is keeping us in a style to which we have become accustomed…” Indeed. Actually, for me, this part is very sobering. (Not that our manner is super duper rich – I always feel I have to add that, because I do not know how many people have commented on how rich they think we must be now that we are living in the Middle East – those days have long since gone in case anyone is wondering).
Yes the style is more not having to worry when a bill comes in rather than champagne and chicken for breakfast. But still compared to what many people have, we are very comfortable indeed.
This resonates so strongly with me right now. My partner is also very hands on blah blah blah, but his new job involves international travel former than 25% of the year and a move away from all our family and friends. I’m really struggling with the responsibility of caring full time for two little ones by myself so much, plus the knowledge that I can’t make any plans for myself because I have no back up. I totally supported him in taking the job, but I’m kind of depressed and overwhelmed by its impact on me.
And yes, it’s the structural stuff that totally enrages me. Exactly Helen.
Twenty five percent. At first I thought !! Then I did a quick sum. Those days away all do add up.
It’s a tough gig, Cristy, especially because your littles are so little. Physically, it must be extremely draining. If it’s any help, one thing I used to do that made more difference than you can imagine was to lay out the clothes for as many days in advance as I had clean clothes. Out of reach of chilluns of course, so they can’t destroy the nicely ordered piles. Wish I had something more useful to say.
i hope you’re feeling better tracy, and cristy i’m sorry it’s so tough. some days here in america i’ve felt exactly that, and my partner hasn’t even had to travel that much… (he normally travels quite a bit.)
thanks for writing about this tracy. i feel i can’t really over at my blog, except in the most general terms. actually things are fine now, and i’m glad we came here, but there have been a few moments over the past six months when i’ve been very angry about the situation! about a month ago my partner had a string of urgent deadlines (his fault really) and then had an important workshop for a week that meant he was home after felix’s bedtime every night. at the same time i had a writing deadline – the only one for the whole year. over the course of a month i kept expecting him to pick up some slack to help me get the work done, but he just had one thing after another. finishing an article while solo parenting was a new and not altogether pleasant experience…
anyway we are both much happier now.
If you manage to solve your dilemma then maybe you can help me ponder mine.
When a male friend-of-a-friend recently heard about my 30 year old beautiful child/adult’s suicide, he said “it must make you wonder what you did wrong as a mother”. My husband was sitting right next to me. Did he intervene or breathe a word? No, not at sound. I answered gently that I didn’t think it was because I had done anything wrong. And to reassure his wife (who was sitting at the end of the table looking daggers at her husband) I also told him that I thought it was better that he said something, rather than just ignoring the fact that anything had happened and that my life had changed in any way.
Looking back, sometimes I am furious that my husband couldn’t even support me with some words in that challenging situation; he’s the silent type; a fence-sitter.
Other times I’m pleased I was forced to manage it on my own. Proud of myself for being strong enough when I had to be. Tears were saved for later.
Reading about your situation gives me comfort in a strange sort of way – that dilemmas are real; that we can’t always be the equanimous partners and mothers we “should” be, balancing everything in just the right way in our beautiful minds! That we just can’t feel guilty about that. I/we need that energy for other immediate things.
In the end, writing about it/sharing it/knowing we’re not alone is the only way to stay upright. Thanks for listening. x
Sandy, what a thing. The strength you must have to find from moment to moment. xx
Sandy, I’m so sorry you had to experience both those things, and I admire your style and composure. Also, I hope his wife tore strips off him later.
Sandy, I can’t begin to imagine the awfulness of your situation. And what an unmitigated douchenozzle. Kudos to you for not going for a swift right jab.